Steve Webb’s biggest columns of the previous decade: The finest recommendation he has given This is Money readers

We have just hit the 10th anniversary of Steve Webb’s first pension column, published on 16 February 2016 on This is Money.

Watch out for a series of articles and events to celebrate this landmark all this week. Today we look back at some of his classic columns over the past 10 years.

When Steve was Pensions Minister in the Coalition Government he oversaw the introduction of the popular pension freedom reforms, which handed over-55s powers over how they spend, save or invest their retirement pots that are taken for granted now.

He caused a stir at the time by telling the media it would be people’s ‘choice’ whether to spend their lifetime savings on Lamborghini sports cars if they wanted, though he didn’t believe many would do so.

One of our readers challenged him over the issue just a few months after he became This is Money’s pensions columnist, and Steve gave a typically frank and thorough response.

Steve quite often receives messages from elderly people who would like to marry late in life – or who have just celebrated a wedding – and want to know about the impact on their finances.

He said the rules vary when it comes to different pension arrangements, and explained how it works for state and private pensions. He also gave a rundown on what to check or amend regarding nominating beneficiaries, making wills and sorting out tax.

Hardly anyone is aware there is a connection between child benefit and how much state pension you could receive decades from now. 

This became a scandal that affected many mothers, because the number of families claiming child benefit slumped after it was axed for higher earners in 2013

Women understandably didn’t claim a benefit they weren’t entitled to receive, but this left some with huge holes in their state pension records. Steve took up the cause and he and This is Money waged a five-year campaign on the issue.

The last Tory government finally saw sense, and Labour has promised to honour a long-awaited fix for parents who missed out on valuable state pension credits, due for introduction this April.

Steve sometimes receives questions from readers in money difficulties, and either he or This is Money always responds with a warning about the serious danger of being scammed AND facing a massive tax charge if you tap your pension before age 55.

We know of no legitimate company that will help you do this, via a loan or anything else – only fraudsters. And you can lose your entire pension pot, and face a tax charge of up to 55 per cent of the pot on top.

HMRC will pursue you for the penalty even if all your pension money has vanished in a scam already, so you can end up in much worse financial trouble than in the first place.

A question to Steve from a husband concerned about his wife’s low state pension kicked off a campaign that led to the Government paying out a total of £800million to 130,000 people to date.

Steve said: ‘The Department for Work and Pensions put in place a four-year correction exercise involving over a thousand civil servants checking hundreds of thousands of pension records one by one.

‘Another important win arising from this was that DWP were then forced to do proper checks of state pension awards and they unearthed another major glitch. 

‘This has so far resulted in around £100million being paid out in arrears to just over 12,000 women.’

Readers fairly often criticise rules which mean older people with a relatively low income can just miss out on pension credit, which opens the door to a lot of other valuable benefits.

Steve explained some of the help that is still available and is worth checking out if you are in this situation, and he added the potential unfairness has diminished as the full state pension was set up so fewer people now need to apply for pension credit.

‘As you may know, I was involved in designing a lot of the current system and my aim was to make sure that as many people as possible built up both a decent state pension in their own right and a private pension on top, but with a decent safety net for a steadily reducing number of people who had no other income to rely on,’ he said.

Steve helped a reader who was the victim of a massive state pension blunder by the DWP. It took a year to send her a letter about her deferred pension, which then quoted a much smaller figure than she was actually owed.

After Steve intervened, the figure was swiftly revised upwards, and he said: ‘My concern is that if you had not been alert and got in touch, you might have missed out on more than £26,000 of a lump sum which was rightfully yours.

‘I often wonder how many other people have found dealing with DWP so challenging that they have eventually given up and simply accepted what they are being paid. Your example shows that it is always worth persevering.’

Transfer values on final salary pensions have dropped dramatically since the Bank of England started raising interest rates again, after years when they were at rock bottom following the financial crisis in 2008.

Higher rates made it easier for pension schemes to fund these pensions, so they are not offering people such big sums to give them up any more. A number of readers have complained to Steve about this in recent years.

People who stay in these schemes still get the benefit of typically generous final salary pensions, which are guaranteed until you die and then carry on paying out to a surviving spouse.

The age you can access private pensions is going to rise from 55 to 57 overnight on 6 April 2028.

Steve said: ‘This creates a very odd situation for people born in a two-year window. Suppose, for example, that you were born on 5 April 1973. In this case you will reach age 55 on 5 April 2028 and can therefore immediately access your pensions on your 55th birthday.

‘However, if you miss that day (perhaps because you are busy celebrating your birthday) you will wake up the next morning to find that you now cannot touch your pensions for another two years.’

‘More generally, anyone born between 6th April 1971 and 5th April 1973 will find that they have a period when they can access their pension at 55, but this will then be switched off for a period of up to two years until they reach the age of 57.’

He explained it is important to check your scheme rules in case they say you can access your pension at ‘age 55’ rather than ‘normal minimum pension age’ (NMPA), because then you will retain the right to access a pension at 55.

Many people will be trying to get their heads round what this bizarre quirk in the rules means for them during the next few years.

A Pension Schemes Bill aimed at boosting individual people’s pensions and economic growth is being worked on in parliament.

And in the Mansion House Accord, 17 pension firms voluntarily pledged to put 10 per cent of the funds they manage for savers into unlisted private businesses and infrastructure projects by 2030, half to be invested in the UK 

The Government has held off from forcing pension fund managers to invest more in the UK in the new Bill, but not taken this off the table for the future.

Steve said: ‘Although the Bill contains a safeguard where schemes can argue that they should be exempt from this if they are convinced it would not be in the members’ interests, this is still a pretty big stick, and will put pressure on schemes to hit the target.

‘My personal view is that the Government simply should not be doing this. If the Mansion House Accord is clear that trustees’ first duty is to their members, and that schemes should do right by consumers, then I cannot see how the Government can justify a threat to over-ride all of this.’